


Clint and Sensibility

by immoral_crow



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 18:18:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1194843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immoral_crow/pseuds/immoral_crow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who do the Avengers turn to when they need advice? The world's most unlikely (and unwilling) agony uncle, that's who.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clint and Sensibility

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teaberryblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/gifts), [rainproof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainproof/gifts).
  * Inspired by [1796 Broadway](https://archiveofourown.org/works/972937) by [rainproof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainproof/pseuds/rainproof), [teaberryblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/pseuds/teaberryblue). 



It starts out so gradually that he doesn’t notice it.

“Seriously,” he tells Tony one morning when he finds him slumped red-eyed and white faced over the coffee pot. “Just talk to her. You were friends with her for years. That counts as a relationship, you know.”

“Yeah, right. ’Cuz everyone’s lining up to be _friends_ with me,” Tony says, his voice dripping bitterness, and Clint realizes that he’s possibly the most habitually-isolated of all of them.

They’re all fucked up in one way or another, and none of them have the sort of Walton-style family that Clint imagines normal people have, but they all have _something_. Clint grew up with the circus and his brother; Steve had at least _had_ friends at one stage; Bruce’s tragedy is that he has to seek isolation rather than having it forced on him; but Tony?

Clint’s getting used to the robots and things, and he appreciates Tony’s genius – he really does – but no one builds a family of robots for themselves unless they are desperately lonely, and more than that, are used to being lonely and can’t see a way out.

There are times when, looking at Tony and Steve, Clint would seriously like to build a time machine so he could punch Stark Senior in the nose.

That’s more the Science Bros line than his though, so he puts another pot of coffee on and sits down opposite Tony.

“Color me interested,” he says, “but if Pepper isn’t your friend, why has she stuck around?”

“Easy.” Tony glares at him, daring him to disagree. “I’m her boss.”

“Oh, please. Like she hasn’t been able to walk into any job she could name for the past five years.” Clint knows this for a fact. Natasha had been vocal when she was working as Pepper’s PA, and Clint had never had the heart to tell her to shut up – not after it had taken so long to get her talking in the first place.

“There’s nowhere that would offer the position I did,” Tony says, looking offended. “Name one place.”

“Apple,” Clint says, because, well, they _have_. “The White House. AT &T…”

“Fine.” Tony scowls at him. “So she stayed. What does that prove?”

“That she cares for you.” Clint decides that, genius aside, he should be using little words here. “And she thinks of you as a friend.”

Tony looks mulish and pokes at his mug.

“Bro,” Clint pokes him with his toe. “Just _try_ talking to her. She’ll appreciate it. I promise.”

“Gah.” Tony pushes the mug back with enough force that Clint has to catch it before it shoots off the edge of the table. “Fine. I’ll talk to her. But when it all goes wrong, it’ll be on your head, Barton.”

He nods, and waits ‘til Tony’s stomped out of the kitchen before he starts to make French toast. It won’t go wrong. He knows Pepper – and he knows how much Tony wants to make this work. Provided he can keep himself from self-sabotaging, it will all be fine.

Clint breaks eggs into a bowl and beats them as the butter melts in the pan. Natasha’s been looking a bit low recently and the smell of frying bread might lure her out of her room. Then he can catch up with her, and they can both pretend they are stone-cold super spies with no feelings.

oOo

He’s completely unsurprised when he’s right, and Tony is all smiles by the time they’re called out the following day.

Which is a damn good thing, because Tony is probably the best of them at dealing with mechanized threats.

Clint wonders sometimes if there are distance learning modules for mad scientists, if they have continuing professional development requirements.

If they have, it would explain why there’s a current vogue for robotic octopuses.

The one they’re fighting on the corner of Fifth Avenue has to be the third they’ve seen in the last month, and Clint’s starting to find the most challenging thing about them is working out what the plural of octopus is.

Seriously, if his twenty-year-old self could hear that, he’d die laughing, but it’s an issue – and since it’s Clint’s turn to deal with the cameras after this bout, he’s the one who’ll be facing irate emails and letters for the next week.

 _Dragons_ , he thinks with longing. _Aliens. Sentient cabbages._ Just let the next webinar deal with something that won’t have the pedantic souls at home raging at how he pronounces it.

He’s almost jealous of Stark at the moment. He gets to fly around, shooting energy blasts that disrupt the electro-puss’s function, like he hasn’t a care in the world. All safe in the knowledge that he can head home to his beautiful girlfriend while someone else deals with the cleanup and the mess. He’s blithely ignoring everything going on on comms in his pursuit of some imagined high score – and Clint is hard-pressed to tell whether Cap or Coulson is more pissed off about that.

“I swear to God,” Coulson says, “I will personally do a month’s paperwork for anyone who can get Stark to listen to me.”

Clint grins and flips to his private channel – the one that Stark isn’t meant to know about, yet monitors anyway. “Let Stark finish fighting this one,” he tells Coulson. “It’s an easy kill, anyway. I’m gonna head to Central Park. I think there’s at least one more there.”

He sees Stark hesitate in mid air, sees the glint in Coulson’s eye as he catches on.

“Approved,” Coulson says. “Just keep Stark away from them.”

“Yessir,” Clint says, doing his best to refrain from a victory dance as Stark shoots off towards Central Park, the electro-puss in his wake like the world’s saddest puppy. He flicks back to the group channel in time to hear Stark’s explosion of rage when there are no more mechanized monsters in the Park and he turns his attention back to his original foe.

Coulson sketches a salute at Clint. He’ll honor his promise about the paperwork, Clint knows – besides, by getting Stark to battle his robo-foe in the park Clint’s saved him at least double that time in forms and paperwork sent in by store owners who’re pissed that they no longer have stores.

He relaxes in the sunshine and waits for Tony to be done. Below him everything is busy, and the press corps is waiting. He wonders if he’ll have time to pick Coulson up a pastry on his way down.

oOo

It’s not like he goes looking for opportunities to give advice to the others, but neither can he just walk away when he sees one of his team looking miserable. Maybe it’s the orphanage upbringing, maybe he’s just a soft touch like Natasha says. Whatever the case, he grabs his morning coffee and takes it out to the roof where Steve has been sitting, staring into space, for the last thirty minutes by Clint’s count.

“How you doing?” he asks as he sits down, and winces as Cap shrugs. “That good, eh?”

Steve fixes him with a look. “I appreciate you coming out, Clint, but I don’t feel like talking right now.”

“Suits me,” Clint says. “I’m just here to drink my coffee, Cap.”

He sips his coffee, fixing his eyes on the horizon from habit, and waits for Cap to crack. It takes a while; three helicopters have flown past, a stray dog down in the street has mooched some pizza off a couple of kids, and Natasha has climbed out of a cab accompanied by Barnes.

“Must be odd,” Clint says, eyes still scanning the horizon, “having Bucky back.”

Steve says nothing, but the atmosphere gets just a touch colder.

“I mean, first you think he’s dead and you’re alone here, and then, bang! He turns up, and it turns out that he and Natasha were a thing back in the day. Gotta be a bit strange.”

“I said, I don’t want to talk about it.” Steve’s voice is positively arctic.

“Mmm.” Clint finally turns to look at Steve. “And how’s that working out for you, Steve?”

“Peachy.” Steve’s face twists into a scowl.

“Great.” Clint puts his mug down on the roof next to him. “Glad to hear it.”

“Good,” Steve says, clipped. “Cuz I’d be a real jerk if I objected to my best pal finding someone he cared about.”

“Possibly.” Clint ponders this. “Or it could be a perfectly understandable reaction to feeling alone again. Y’know.”

“I’m happy for him.” Steve juts out his jaw and Clint sighs.

He’s seen the way that Barnes and Natasha look at Steve when they think no one’s looking. He doesn’t think there’s any risk of anyone getting hurt here, he’s just not sure he can make Steve see that.

“C’mon,” he says. Steve is more of a learn-by-experience kinda guy, and even though he looks mulish, he lets Clint pull him up.

They head through the Tower ‘til they reach the rec room. Natasha and Barnes are set up there, her feet on his thigh and Groundhog Day showing on the screen.

Steve hangs back, looking deeply unhappy, and Clint has to drag him into the room.

“I remember what you said when we were seeing each other,” he says to Natasha, “about love, and how it’s not a finite resource.”

“Your point?” she says. She’s raising an eyebrow, but she isn’t throwing anything at him, even though he’s absolutely certain she can see the bits of Steve that are poking round the edge of the door frame.

“My point is, life’s short, there aren’t many second chances, and Steve’s miserable.” He glares at her, daring her to disagree.

“And what do you expect me to do about it?”

“Fix it,” he says, and pushes Steve into the room as soon as she nods.

He closes the door behind him – the noises are distressing enough already – and heads off to find more coffee. Natasha isn’t the gentlest when it comes to relationships, but frankly the whole Barnes/Rogers/Romanov dance isn’t going to be resolved by tact and diplomacy, and Natasha’s special brand of tough love might be what the whole fiasco needs.

Since they emerge three hours later looking significantly more relaxed, Clint thinks he can safely congratulate himself on a job well done.

oOo

So, everything is good, and Clint is relatively content, right up until Tony opens his big mouth and blows everything out of the water.

Clint always thought that Team Dinners were a fatally flawed idea, so it makes sense that it’s the backdrop for the end of Clint’s world.

He’s just helped himself to some of the ma po tofu (cuz they might have sunk to having Team Dinners, but no one’s bothered learning to cook yet), letting the conversation wash over him, when Tony hits him with a fork.

“Hey, Barton, put that down and tell Bruce what he should do?”

“Huh?” Tony looks absurdly hopeful, which just adds to Clint’s confusion. “Whadda you mean, _tell Bruce what he should do_?”

“Simple.” Tony looks at him like he’s some sort of idiot. “You’re the well-adjusted one, Barton. You fix our problems for us. So, get with the program and tell Bruce what he should do about the whole Bet–”

“No.” Clint pushes his chair back from the table, food forgotten. “No way. This is not me.”

He looks to Natasha for confirmation, but she just shrugs and loops her leg over Steve’s thigh, and it all becomes a bit too much. 

Clint, frankly, freaks the fuck out.

About the only thing he can take pride in is that he doesn’t take his go bag with him – the one with the new identity that means he could live off grid.

He’s not running forever, he rationalizes as he sprints down the stairs and heads for the door, he’s just going to take some me-time. Hell, he’s saved the world often enough by now that he’s probably entitled to a couple of days of down time.

He ends up holed up in the place where he feels safest, with a stock of pudding cups and an emergency bag of coffee grounds, and only leaves for calls of nature and real coffee when the place is deserted.

It is, inevitably, Stark who disrupts his peace.

“Agent, have you seen Clint?”

Phil looks up from the report he’d been working on, and Clint can see how his brow furrows.

“No. Why? Have you mislaid him?”

Tony stops fiddling with the fully-jointed Captain America doll that’s sitting on Phil’s bookshelf and glares at Phil.

“Like you don’t know already,” he says. “He freaked out about something at dinner the other day – and before you ask I have no idea what the hell he was upset about – and took off. Natasha says he’ll be back, but I’m not so sure. Three of his trackers say he’s still in the Tower, one says he’s at SHIELD, and the others are in Missouri, LA, and Beijing.”

He frowns, like he’s personally offended by Clint’s incredible dispersing tracking devices, and Clint grins. The half hour at the airport had been well spent. He’d even toyed with the idea of losing the last tracker, except it was one Phil had implanted when he recruited Clint, and that gave it sentimental value. Hell, most people up ‘til then had been more anxious to get rid of Clint. It was definitely the first time that someone had wanted to make sure they knew where he was.

Anyway, performing minor surgery on himself has never been Clint’s favorite thing.

“Natasha knows him best,” Phil says, turning back to the report. “If she says he’ll be back, he will.”

“And the trackers?” Tony asks, but Phil just waves his hand in dismissal.

“There’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation,” he says, “and if you have nothing else, then I am trying to write a letter to the Mayor to explain why the Avengers, and Iron Man in particular, have caused over three bil–”

“Fine,” Tony says, bad grace apparent in every word. “But I get to say I told you so later when it turns out that he’s been kidnapped by the X-Men for some nefarious experi–”

“I’ll make a note,” Phil says, and Tony leaves, still grumbling under his breath.

Phil sighs as the door closes, and gets up to brew coffee, which is an unfair tactic in Clint’s not-so-humble opinion, because it’s 8pm and Clint hasn’t had any since before Phil got in at 4.30am.

He’s completely unsurprised when Phil pours out two mugs before climbing up onto the desk and poking the air vent aside.

“Coffee?” he asks, like it’s an everyday occurrence to find Clint camped out over his desk, which it isn’t. Not any more, anyway.

“You knew I was up here?”

Phil looks at him like he’s stupid.

“Then why didn’t you tell Stark?”

“Because it’ll do him good to see that he isn’t the only one with feelings in the team,” Phil says, like it’s obvious.

“You didn’t seem to notice I was here,” Clint says stubbornly. “You kept on working, and you didn’t say anything to me.”

“You tend to come down when you’re ready.” Phil shrugs. “And why wouldn’t I keep working? I’m a damn sight safer when you’re up there.”

“Oh.” Clint deflates, his righteous indignation replaced by something bleaker that he can’t name.

“Wanna tell me what’s up?” Phil hands him the coffee and clambers lightly up into the vent. 

“You mean you don’t know already?” he asks, gripping the coffee like a lifeline, but Phil’s face remains impassive and Clint sighs. “It turns out I’m the adult in the Tower.”

“And?”

“And? It’s ridiculous! I’m not an adult. How can I be the adult?”

He’s not sure what he expects, but it certainly isn’t for Phil to snigger.

“Because you’re living with a spoiled man-boy, a frozen national icon, a rage monster, a god, and a product of the Red Room?” Phil stares at him, still smiling. “It’s all comparative, Barton. You’re a comparative adult, not an actual adult.”

His tone is dryly amused, and Clint finds himself relaxing.

“They come to me for advice,” he says, his voice a bare whisper, and shudders slightly.

“Distressing,” Phil says, bumping Clint gently with his shoulder. “But from what I heard you’ve been giving reasonably sound advice.”

“Ugh.” Clint bangs his head on the side of the vent. “Shut _up_ , Coulson. You’re making it worse.”

“Why?” Phil looks confused.

“If I’m offering such great advice why is my life such a fucking mess?”

“You mean the life where you’re a superhero? Saving the world? Surrounded by friends? That life?”

“Yes,” Clint says, willfully ignoring the sarcasm. “The one where I come home every night to an empty bed. The one where all the Avengers are in successful relationships apart from me. The one where I resort to spying on the person I care about because that’s the only way I get to see him anymore and I’m too much of a coward to talk to him about it.”

Phil goes very still next to him, and Clint wants to kick himself. It’s too late though. The words are out there now, and Clint finds himself sneaking a glance at Phil to gauge his reaction.

Phil’s staring at him, his expression unreadable, and Clint has a moment of wild panic that he’s ruined everything.

“Forget I said anything,” he says. “I…”

“Why?” Phil asks. “Why should I forget?”

“Because it’ll mess things up,” Clint says, his voice rising slightly.

“Like Stark and Pepper are messed up?” Phil puts his hand on Clint’s shoulder, grounding him. “Like Steve, and Natasha, and Bucky are?”

“They’re not us, though,” Clint says, swallowing harshly. Phil’s face is very close now, the scent of his cologne almost intoxicating. “We’re not them.”

“Astute.” Phil leans even closer. His lips are brushing Clint’s now as he speaks. “We’re us, and we’ve got a history for this.”

“History?” Clint is breathless with Phil’s presence. “You got some memories you’re not sharing?”

“Albuquerque.” The word is almost a kiss against Clint’s lips. “Mississippi. Dubrovnik.”

“Jobs,” Clint says. “You were acting for the job.”

He can feel the curve of Phil’s smile against his mouth.

“I’m flattered,” Phil says. “But I’m not that good an actor.”

The immensity of the lie makes Clint laugh, and it breaks the thread of tension between them, leaving them clutching each other, laughing and kissing, trying to hold on to the sheer sides of the vent so they don’t tumble back down into Phil’s office.

“Your choice of venue sucks,” he tells Phil when they finally break apart, and he can look all he want at Phil’s mussed up hair, his kiss-swollen lips.

“I think you’ll find it was your choice of venue,” Phil says. “I was just making the most of what you gave me.”

“And what happens now?”

Phil looks at him, serious. “We climb down,” he says, “and I’ll take you for dinner. Then I’m taking you home.”

“To the Tower?”

Phil smiles. “Eventually. Tomorrow, maybe. I’ve got plans for you tonight.”

“Really?” Clint drops from the vent, turns, and holds his hand out to help Phil down in an unnecessary act of chivalry. “And how are you going to explain that to Stark?”

“Don’t worry.” Phil flips his laptop closed, piles the files on his desk into a drawer and slams it shut. “I’ll find someone to babysit the kids while you’re occupied.”

Clint leans back against the door and watches Phil shrugging his jacket on, not even trying to hide the goofy smile on his face.

“You do know that you’ll never hear the end of it when they find out?” The words are flippant, but he can’t hide the thread of worry in his tone.

“Worth it,” Phil says, not missing a beat. “I know what I’m getting into, Clint.”

His smile is so genuine, it warms Clint, thawing the last fears in his chest.

“In that case, come on.” He holds the door open for Phil, bowing him through. “Let’s go stay out after curfew while we can.”

**Author's Note:**

> I blame 1796 Broadway for this. They kept making Clint the sensible one, and it struck me that the poor bloke would find that very confusing. Thus: all their fault. 
> 
> My grateful thanks to Selori for her patience and kindness in pointing out all the places where this made no sense whatsoever. I think I caught everything, but any mistakes are mine.


End file.
